This is all they've got. As a political strategy. As a positive political project. Rolling around gargling in fake terror & vomiting in fear at the power of their own motivated imaginations

The latest nonsense Facebook advert Labour are pushing in the Gorton and Denton by-election. Just one more reason why I could never vote Labour.

It’s so hard to have a reasonable conversation about AI, because people refuse to see the massive upsides of job elimination, higher electrical bills, hard drive shortages, poisoning black people in Memphis, and an economy where a handful of pedos with bad hair control your life

#StrangerThanFiction Two stories in today's news featuring 'Aldi' and 'Rye': one is about the Real Bread Campaign complaining to trading standards about an Aldi rye loaf, and the other is about Aldi getting the go-ahead for a new store in Rye 😃

If you are not sure if you had all your vaccines, the GP can check for you UK kids can go to the GP and ask to get the vaccines they missed by using their Gillick competency rights If you have people coming to school to do flu or HPV vaccines, they will often do missed vaccines at the same time

Morning

Well. This is an odd one isn't it, but I'm pleased with it. #PoemsAbout #Undressed - thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk and @alanparrywriter.co.uk I'm behind with my Promptcombo and Poemsabout reading - will get on to it soon!

take the city walk to the dene wood— last year’s leaf litter is being pushed aside spears of cuckoopint spreading rosettes of avens rough feathers of chervil the bitter winter aconite #poem #objectivist

Vote labour, get Reform

Palantir, a US spy-tech firm, has been given access to millions of NHS patient records. Its founder has said the NHS should be 'ripped up'. Join me in calling on the government to end the dangerous Palantir contract. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

Corruption. Nothing less can describe the scale of this influence. I asked ministers this week if they would cap donations at the same time as asking about openness on lobbying meetings, and this was the part of the question they refused to answer.

sigh

Reform politicians are happy to throw insults from a distance. But when it comes to debating their ideas? No show. Richard Tice pulled out. Farage won’t face me. Now their candidate in Gorton & Denton has ducked our candidate Hannah Spencer. Vote Green.

One for #PromptCombo #Ecstasy, and I hope it's suitably ecstatic

Reform UK have rejected ‘policies involving the rewilding of productive farmland or the destocking of upland farms’, stating they “are not aligned with its principles or objectives”.’ Lest we be in any doubt about how disastrous Farage would be for nature… www.fwi.co.uk/news/reform-...

Great news amidst all the gloom. There have been a lot of beaver releases but these wild releases are really significant in England – finally we are giving this life-giving animal the right to roam. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

This is incredibly funny to try because even if it *was* true, then it would mean Streeting was defending Mandleson in September for the love of the game.

Listen out for the silences & where they're coming from surrounding this story. It is highly telling which big platform commentators & opinion havers in & around Labour who are usually very vocal on most things haven't uttered a squeak about this huge story

We need a UK Digital Sovereignty Strategy! Our over-reliance on foreign tech giants is a huge risk to our security and resilience when faced with Donald Trump’s ever increasing belligerence. Companies like Palantir have no place in our critical digital infrastructure.

Is it good that our economic system the one we are regularly told is the only game in town & which we are all held hostage to has made a handful of extremely creepy extremely dangerous men richer than god who nowspend their time raving about the apocalypse & the coming of the antichrist

It’s happening #lungwort #spring #gardening

charcoal sketch of dawn cyanotype sky two jackets, boots— broccoli for the chickens

In these dark days of February, a little something to look forward to.

If this is true, then it is beyond sinister and shows the levels of toxicity and poisonous factionalism that some in the party have created. Questions must be asked and answers must be given.

New on FT website: Downing Street has refused to say whether Sir Keir Starmer knew Palantir was a client of Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm when they both visited the company in Washington last February — ahead of it winning a £240mn UK government contract. www.ft.com/content/5bba...

Exclusive: Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons was provided with intelligence files gathered on journalists (including me) who had reported on Labour Together, the thinktank he chaired at the time (before he became an MP), sources say. Know more about this story? Contact me, Signal: henrydyer.01

Although there's a lot going on right now it's been *extremely* telling the relative silence this has been met with & in particular which big platform media/commentator Sensibles in & around Labour haven't uttered a peep

For this week's #PoemsAbout #Mouths, I'm thinking about things that don't explain themselves. It is inspired by a piece i wrote for @daveashleypoet.bsky.social's #FreeVerseFebruary #prompt. Thank you to the host @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk and to all of the other writers.

When talking about righteous anger, worth remembering that the Labour Party has been supporting a genocide in the Middle East for more than two years.

American fascists with lots of cash to splash will find door after door opening wide for them with Britain’s horrible ruling class, our horrific media outlets and our networks of godawful think tanks and policy shops. Well, wider than they already have been.

Could you honestly even begin to imagine Labour, the Tories or Reform standing up for exploited people like this…? The establishment parties straight up don’t care.

Pressure building on govt to come clean about Mandelson's role in bringing US spy-tech firm Palantir into the heart of our NHS. The fingerprints of Mandelson and his lobbying firm are all over these deals. The rot goes to the heart of this Labour govt www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

As a leftie I defend the core British values of the levellers, the chartists, the suffragettes, Cable Street, the Poll tax protesters and many more. Starmer defends the values of genocide, colonialism, corruption, authoritarianism and rape.

The fuck we will.

Shopfronts, Huddersfield, 1974, photo by Chris Killip (1946-2020).

the morning ride in the rain — spring still a pipe dream the Tyne boiling mercury to the armpits of the staiths

The burn hidden in the allotments which is slowly being cleared of rubbish. I’m trying to work out what to do along the bank - it’s very bare and is crying out for some willow, but it’s also developing into a bit of a desire path. Ideas welcome! #allotments #gardening #riparian #naturewriting

Writing about elder trees and how downright weird they are open.substack.com/pub/robgalpi... #NatureWriting #BlogPost #Elder #Allotment #Gardening

I really hope the Greens draw a lot of attention to this. Stogia, Labour's candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, is a backdoor privatisation candidate who's clearly favoured by Labour to further their agenda of increasingly hollowing out the public sector

Maybe partly bc journos from outfits like The News Agents were opining about what a stroke of political strategic genius they considered his appointment to be

I recorded this today, in Portland, Oregon, at a huge march to the ICE facility in SW. The crowd was full of cyclists who had ridden there in memory of Alex Pretti; members of several labor unions; and ordinary citizens of every age, including this little girl. So of course ICE deployed tear gas.

I don't like to talk about stories before they are fully reported, but I am writing on ICE in a Minnesota town that isn't Minneapolis. However bad you think it is, it is worse. It is a campaign of pure terror whose only strategic goal is more terror. There is no strategy other than to break people.

Thousands of union workers + their families marched in Portland today. We were tear-gassed by Immigration and Customs agents who have no jurisdiction over American citizens and shouldn't have weapons of any kind. What candidates/electeds were there? @jsalfororegon.bsky.social was. Who else?

Nigel Farage claims that he's fighting the Greens. But for weeks now he's refused to debate me. Reform know Gorton & Denton are ready to vote for the Green Party.

I’ve written this lengthy FT analysis overnight about the multiple multi-thousand pound Epstein payments to Mandelson’s husband these particular paragraphs are worth reading slowly www.ft.com/content/608a...

#haiku #haikusaturday what if I fall in the woods and no one hears me

It's a Saturday AND IT ISN'T RAINING

Solidarity with @zackpolanski.bsky.social and every one of us with wonky teeth. Whether you have straight teeth or wonky teeth, whether you were born in Britain or you came here yesterday... Us Brits STICK TOGETHER TO DEFEND OUR BRITISH WAY OF LIFE 🤭🙌🏻💃🏻💪🏻🦷 🇬🇧

One for #PoemsAbout #BlackVeils @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk